Fleet Officer Denis Lecuyer (left) and Const. Eric Perreault walk past two of the Ottawa Police Service’s 58 new Ford Taurus police cruisers.
Residents of Ottawa may have noticed a change in the look of some of the city's police cruisers patrolling the streets in the past month, after a miscommunication about the design delayed release the of the new cars.
Last February, the Ottawa Police Service approved the purchase of 58 new Ford Taurus “Police Interceptor” vehicles to replace some of the aging Crown Victorias that the force currently uses.
After a few technical glitches and other temporary roadblocks, about 20 of those cruisers are now roaming the city, replacing any Crown Victoria older than three years or with more than 160,000 kilometres logged.
“It’s not really a question of dumping all the cars on the road right away,” says Ottawa police Insp. Uday Jaswal. “It’s replacing cars as they need replacing.”
The total cost of the project was $1,621,596, with each car costing $27,958.
One of the reasons Ottawa police didn’t immediately start putting the cars into service was because of a problem fitting their existing computer equipment into the Tauruses.
According to a March 25 report from the Ottawa Police Services Board, the installation of some of the existing equipment wasn’t possible, and more importantly, the passenger airbag did not deploy with the current setup that the Ottawa police use.
Jaswal says the board went ahead with the purchasing of the new cars under the impression that electronic equipment from the Crown Victorias would fit in the new cabin of the Ford Taurus.
However, upon receipt of the cars, “staff noted that Ford had introduced last-minute changes to the Taurus design,” according to the report.
The police board then did extensive collaboration with other services in the province to find a solution to the problem, finding that several other departments had the same experience.
The fix, a new mounting system for their laptops, will cost $675 per unit for a total cost of $65,000. This money will come out of a budget of $464,000 for works-in-progress.
Board chair Coun. Eli El-Chantiry was concerned about the cost, but Jaswal said Ottawa police is talking to Ford.
“We are planning certainly before the purchase of any more Tauruses to have discussions with Ford about that in terms of some of the upfit costs which we’ve incurred,” Jaswal says.
Christine Hollander, product communications manager with Ford, said in an interview April 3 that Ottawa police had yet to contact Ford or the dealership where the cars were bought to discuss the issue.She also said that she hadn’t heard of any other police service in North America with this problem.
However, Massimo Pari, vice-president of D&R electronics – the company that created the solution for Ottawa and other services in Canada – says the other forces knew the problem before purchasing the new cruisers.
Ford’s website says it designed the new car with a column-shifter (which is located on the steering column) in order to leave the space for a centre console.
The website says the space is the same width as that of the old Crown Victoria “so police agencies can install center consoles from their CVPI (Crown Victoria Police Interceptor) right into the new Police Interceptor.”
However, Pari wasn’t convinced.
“You can’t take something out of a Crown Vic, how it was set up in a Crown Vic, and say it’s going to fit in a Taurus, because they’re two different vehicles,” Pari says. “It’s not going to happen.”